Brun-Kjeldaas and Simmen Wrap up ISF Season

Stine Brun-Kjeldaas (NOR/Duotone) and Gian Simmen (SUI/Blue Win)! Even though this final showdown was not decisive for the titles in Halfpipe any more, both fresh Champions gave their best in the last superpipe-session this winter.

Both have been dominating this season, Brun-Kjeldaas won every single competition she attended until she got beaten the first time by Natasza Zurek in Snow Summit/USA in February! She then continued with winning the Stoneham Canadian Masters, the next Motorola ISF Championship event right away. She defended her Championship title, which is “even more worth it” – as she stated.

Also Simmen set the right direction already at the season takeoff in Laax, where he won impressively. He also won the Nippon Open (ISF World Series), came second in the Championship events in Leysin/SUI and in Sierra at Tahoe/USA, third in Snow Summit/USA, in short: constantly on top this season.

Second on the Championship-podium and defending his title as vice Champ at the men’s is next Swiss rider, Therry Brunner (Nitro). At the women’s, Fabienne Reuteler (SUI/YDOIRIDE) impressively proved her pipe-skills after already winning the Snowboardcross finals in Laax (8th in the final ranking) – with a win tonight, she more than secured her vice Champ title.

Third on the podium are Daniel Franck (NOR/Salomon) and Kelly Clarke (USA/AspenSBS), both unfortunately not present at this final event. “It’s been a long and exhausting season, and thanks to the system (where only the best 6 results count for the title-race), I also did not attend all events but picked the bestfitting ones. Davos is a great place and for me, it’s the symbolic end of the season”, Champion Simmen stated.

Today’s night finals showed Halfpipe riding at its best: 18 years old Italian Giacomo Kratter (Nitro), Junior World Champ 99/00 and one of the real upcoming rockstars on the tour showed awesome Haakonflip 720, front to switch 720, Backside air … all with very high amplitude and cleanly executed. The win was his, Martin Cernik, showing trick combinations of about the same difficulty was not that clean and came second, ahead of world ranked number 31 in Halfpipe, 20 years old Norwegian Thomas Harstad (Billabong). At the women’s, Fabienne Reuteler showed some big, safe 540 to 540 combos and won with her second run.

What about the World Champions? While Stine Brun Kjeldaas took it “pretty easy” tonight and ending up second tonight, Simmen and Brunner wanted too much: Both were chasing after the 110% runs, sick airtime witch technical masterpieces, but crashing both at the last hit of each of their runs. “Therry (Brunner) and I both got our championship-rankings secured before tonight and so we just wanted to do the best possible show for the crowd. We did not have to do these last hits and would have been pretty top, but we were giving everything to the fantastic Davos-crowd “,Simmen stated. He finally ended up 8th, Brunner 10th tonight.